The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.

“No need here,” he said, “of flowery orations and learned arguments.  With this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted in these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to prevent me!”

The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince.  The argumentum ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to prove that the Reformed religion had been “planted” by one who had drawn the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for his country’s independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies there is usually but one issue to be expected.

Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen, one of them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards gravely as they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of civil commotions.  It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great war two whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt.  Although some free-thinking people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a prevalence of strong westerly gales, while others found proof in it of a superabundance of those creatures in the Polar seas, which should rather give encouragement to the Dutch and Zealand fisheries, it is probable that quite as dark forebodings of coming disaster were caused by this accident as by the trumpet-like defiance which the Stadholder had just delivered to the States of Holland.

Meantime the seceding congregation of the Hague had become wearied of the English or Gasthuis Church, and another and larger one had been promised them.  This was an ancient convent on one of the principal streets of the town, now used as a cannon-foundry.  The Prince personally superintended the preparations for getting ready this place of worship, which was thenceforth called the Cloister Church.  But delays were, as the Contra-Remonstrants believed, purposely interposed, so that it was nearly Midsummer before there were any signs of the church being fit for use.

They hastened accordingly to carry it, as it were, by assault.  Not wishing peaceably to accept as a boon from the civil authority what they claimed as an indefeasible right, they suddenly took possession one Sunday night of the Cloister Church.

It was in a state of utter confusion—­part monastery, part foundry, part conventicle.  There were few seats, no altar, no communion-table, hardly any sacramental furniture, but a pulpit was extemporized.  Rosaeus preached in triumph to an enthusiastic congregation, and three children were baptized with the significant names of William, Maurice, and Henry.